


Turning Towards the Morning

by scribefindegil



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Celebrations, Family Bonding, Found Family, Gen, Hope, New Years, a smorgasbord of angst and fluff, it's midnight in some timezone, this entire extended/found/refound family loves each other so much and it's really important
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-13 22:18:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9144712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribefindegil/pseuds/scribefindegil
Summary: “Ten! Nine! Eight!”The chant took on a life of its own, picking up speed and volume as it went. The words carried in the open air, up into the sky. Anyone looking down on the roof of the Mystery Shack would have seen the fog of ten people’s breath, ten warm bodies pushing out air into a frozen world and laughing as they did so. There’s a feeling that comes sometimes when people are together and happy in the cold, a certainty that your exhalations can warm the whole universe.Some New Years that weren't worth celebrating, some that were, and one that felt like magic.





	

There were a lot of things that Stan knew he shouldn’t do as he marked off night after interminable night of work on the Portal. He shouldn’t scream. He shouldn’t punch the machine. He shouldn’t throw books on the floor, especially the expensive ones. He shouldn’t drink.

This was a bad night for shoulds.

He’d been working on the same damn problem for three weeks. Longer, really, but it was the last three weeks that he’d done nothing but sit and stare at it all night. All day, too, now that the Shack was closed for the winter. Night and day didn’t really matter anymore. It was always dark in the basement. It was usually dark in the rest of the house—and it was cold. He’d learned after the first year that he couldn’t turn the heating off completely, but if he kept it on just enough that the pipes didn’t freeze and hid himself in the basement where it was chilly but not freezing year-round he could save a lot of money. Money that should be spent on more textbooks or stupid sci-fi materials.

It definitely shouldn’t be spent on bottles of cheap gin, but again, “should.” To be fair, he’d bought food too. He’d even eaten some of it. Not that day, but . . . recently.

The bottle sat half-empty at his elbow. In front of him, the six-fingered hand on the front of Ford’s book glimmered in the light of the lamp. It was the only thing he’d been able to make light up since he started this whole thing. The book was closed tonight. He wasn’t looking at any of the dozens of tabs sticking out of it, filled with question marks and scribbled equations and notes desperately trying to figure out whether the scattered alchemical symbols had some coded message or if Ford had really just drawn them all over because he thought they were cool. Stan wouldn’t put it past him.

And then he was crying, because that was Ford, that was _exactly_ Ford, all full of hope and excitement and pointless nerd doodles. The Ford who had written those pages was older than the one Stan had known, and when he first flipped through them a part of him almost wanted them to feel unfamiliar, as if the man who’d written them was as much a stranger as the one who’d met him at the door with a crossbow in his hands. But everything was painfully, achingly familiar. He tried to bite that part down and focus on the work that needed to be done. Some nights he even succeeded.

But not tonight. His shoulders shook and he was almost glad for the tears that ran down his nose, blurring away the reflection of his face in the polished metal set into the cover of the book. His hair had gone silver while he wiled away his time scamming tourists and throwing everything he had against the useless hunk of metal that loomed above him. Ford’s hair must be silver to, if he was still—wherever he was.

The clock in front of him ticked over to midnight.

Champagne was traditional. He heard. He’d never tried it. When he . . . left home . . . he’d been too young, and after that . . . Well. He’d been drinking on plenty of New Year’s Eves, but champagne wasn’t for that type of drinking. It was for celebrating. Stan hadn’t had anything to celebrate in years. He wasn’t sure whether he ever had.

“Happy New Year, Ford,” he said, and raised the bottle.

*

Time was much more flexible beyond the Portal.

Every universe had its own method of timekeeping, its own days and years and clocks to set. He’d almost gotten used to all of that when he encountered the Do-Over Dimension, and then he lost most of a cycle worrying about whether the time he lost whenever the dimension moved back counted towards the measurement of his life.

He wasn’t the only one who worried. It was a while before he learned about the personal choronometers that were worn by those who spent too much of their lives between dimensions or messing with time, and much longer before he was able to acquire one himself. The circumstances under which he got it were . . . murky. At least he could say for sure that the previous owner wouldn’t miss it. It was hard to miss anything when most of you was slowly dissolving in the gullet of a Scurrilous Vermilion.

It didn’t take long to program the thing. A DNA scan, a sample of a non-organic object from his home dimension (he fed the scanner a tiny cracked corner of emulsion from the photograph he kept in his pocket), and typing in his date of birth and it was functional. He strapped it around his left wrist, not wincing as the sensor embedded itself under his skin.

Time was much more flexible beyond the Portal, and it was all too easy to lose track of it. To stay in one place too long. To lose sight of his mission. The chronometer was a reminder of what he had to do and how fleeting his lifetime was.

Ford was upside-down in a ventilation shaft when it chimed. The robo-spider that he’d been trying to hack jumped away, chittering, and when he reached out to grab it it only bit his finger and scuttled off.

He sighed and let himself relax. Another one would be along in a minute. He just needed to lift the security paradigm from one of them and he’d be able to bypass the xavorth circuits and unlock the vault. Then he’d be able to take the moebius charger he needed for his quantum destabilizer.

Only a few more of these missions left. He was so close.

He looked at his wrist. There shouldn’t be any time distortions in this building, but he’d been surprised before.

No. Nothing local. The display informed him, “New Calendar Year in Dimension 46’\”. It was such a simple message, such a small thing to send the guilt ricocheting through him like a bullet.

He was getting old. That was the long and short of it. It had been years since he first saw the traces of gray in his hair, the wrinkles around his eyes. He’d hoped . . . foolish, yes, but he’d hoped, once, that when the Oracle spoke of him having “The face of the man who would destroy Bill” that she meant his face as it was then. That once he had the plate inserted he’d be ready for the confrontation. But it had been so long and the work was so slow. He couldn’t believe that the crags and wrinkles of his face were recognizable as the face Jheselbraum had prophesized about.

But it was the only face he had, so it would have to do. However many years, however many accusing beeps from the chronometer it took, he would have to do. There was no one else who could.

*

“Do you think they’re asleep?”

“Mabel, shhh!”

“Do you think they’re asleep _now_?”

“They won’t be if you keep talking!”

Mabel, who was dangling her upper body off the top bunk, stuck her tongue out at him.

“Phooey,” she said.

Dipper pressed the light-up button on his watch, hiding his wrist under the covers so no passing parents would notice the light. It had been exactly . . . forty-two minutes since the hall light clicked off, a sure sign that their parents had gone to bed. And they had eighteen minutes until midnight. All according to plan.

“Diiiiiipperrrr . . .”

“Yes, fine, I think they’re asleep! Let’s go!”

“Yaaay!” Mabel whispered and half-tumbled, half-somersaulted off her bed, landing on the pile of pillows and stuffed animals that had been set on the floor for that very purpose.

“Now, who wants to join the party . . . ?”

While his sister was busy interviewing her plushies, Dipper pulled The Plan out from under his pillow. It took up three sheets of computer paper and was held together with tape and stickers. He dug around in his comforter until he unearthed one of his emergency pens and checked off, “36. Wait until Mom and Dad are asleep.” For a moment he chewed on the pen cap, considering pre-emptively checking off Step 37 (Sneak Downstairs), but since that was one of the challenging ones he decided against it.

“We’re ready!”

Mabel was wearing spy glasses and had a blanket draped over her shoulders like a cloak. Mr. Nuffles, her balding stuffed pig, was clutched under one arm. He was also wearing spy glasses, but she’d accessorized with a sparkly purple party hat.

She grinned and gave Dipper a thumbs-up. He returned the gesture as he slipped out of bed.

Dipper had spent most of the previous day charting all the squeaky patches under the carpet, and then Mabel had helped him make a map that glowed in the dark so they wouldn’t have to risk a flashlight. They tiptoed past their parents’ bedroom, across the landing, and down the stairs. The stairs were the hardest part; there were three in a row that squeaked, so they needed to hang on to the banister and slide over them.

Once they were downstairs, it was a simple matter to sneak across to the blanket fort they’d constructed the previous day. There, safely under the kitchen table and behind three layers of fleece, Dipper finally turned his flashlight on and laid his watch on the floor between them so they could watch the countdown.

“This is so exciting!” said Mabel, taking the party hat off Mr. Nuffles’ head to reveal two more underneath. She passed the green one to Dipper and put the purple one on her own head.

“Look at us! Staying up late, having adventures . . .”

Dipper scowled. “Maybe next year they’ll let us stay up. Nick Watson’s been allowed to stay up until midnight since first grade. It’s not fair. We’re big kids now!”

Mabel pulled the Secret Snack Bucket out from its hiding place above the spare leaves of the table. “Yeah, but this is way more fun! Who cares about being a big kid? Then you gotta be a grownup, and that’s boring!”

Dipper thought that being a grown-up was totally the opposite of boring, but he put the party hat on anyway. Party hats weren’t part of The Plan. Nothing sparkly was specifically part of The Plan, but every Plan had a number of additional considerations and one of them was that Mabel would probably make everything sparkly or sticky, or, more likely, both.

“I mean, look at Mom and Dad,” Mabel went on. “They can do anything they want but they just go to bed early and they won’t even eat sugary cereal! Promise me you won’t be a boring grown-up.”

“Ha!” Dipper punched his sister’s shoulder. She giggled. “You wish!

“Oh oh oh!” Mabel pointed at the watch. “It’s almost tiiiime! Get ready to clink!”

Dipper knew that grown-ups drank champagne, so he’d put root beer in a couple of plastic flutey glasses rescued from the back of the cupboard. He could barely see the liquid through all the stickers Mabel had added to them.

He reached out and tapped his glass against his sister’s.

“Clink!”

“Clink!”

They watched the seconds tick down. Dipper knew the watch was accurate; he’d made sure to set it that morning. Very nearly yesterday morning. Woah.

“Ten!” Mabel whispered.

Dipper joined in. “Nine! Eight! Seven!”

They were counting faster than the seconds passed. Dipper figured that was okay; the excitement was worth being a couple of seconds off.

“Six! Five! Four!”

They grinned at each other, no longer looking at the watch.

“Three two one HAPPY NEW YEAR!!”

Both of them had forgotten they were supposed to be whispering about halfway through the countdown. They drained their glasses before their father appeared blearily to retrieve them, and then they stayed up for another half hour watching the fireworks through their bedroom window.

*

Abuelita went to bed at 9pm sharp except on Bingo days when she was wild and stayed up until 10, sometimes 10:30. She never changed her sleeping habits because of holidays, and Soos would never ask her too.

So they celebrated New Years at 8pm. It wasn’t that bad. Like, time zones made things all crazy anyway, so it was probably still _a_ midnight, just not theirs. They did a countdown and everything, and Abuelita made cookies shaped like whatever year it was, and Soos would blow one of those little party horns. You know. Normal New Years things.

When he was a kid, sometimes Soos would imagine having a parent who stayed up past eight and wanted to watch fireworks with him, sort of like how he imagined being an all-powerful wolf man with laser eyes. It was the kind of thing you got over. Maybe not the laser eyes. Those still sounded pretty sweet.

Soos’ computer was old and kind of crotchety. Sometimes it froze and he had to restart it from the wall. Sometimes parts of it exploded a little. Recently he’d just been having the restart problems, though, so that was good.

He’d been fully immersed in the world-spanning story of Wagon Age when the computer crashed for the third time that night. Soos sighed and munched on some year-shaped cookies until it booted up again.

The crotchetiness meant that it took a long time for the desktop to load all its little icons. He’d gotten really used to the thinky screen.

“Huh,” said Soos quietly. In the corner of the screen were the numbers 12:19. “Snuck up on me, didn’t you New Year? You better be rad, okay?”

As if in response, the computer tower started sparking. Looking on the bright side, it was kind of like having fireworks.

*

Wendy knew that the construction of her snow shelter wasn’t up to par this year. Nothing was up to par this year. Not since—no. She wasn’t going to think about it. Not again. Not now.

Her parents—her dad. It was just her dad now. Her dad always confiscated all their electronics before they started the apocalypse training, but she’d found a radio hidden in one of the trees early on. The signal was patchy and she was using her hunting knife as part of the antenna, but it meant that she could hear the broadcast. The countdown. Usually she didn’t know it was coming until she heard the fireworks from town, which, depending on how lenient Dad was being either meant that the simulation was over or that they’d entered a nuclear winter. Hopefully they’d get to go home early this year.

Or. Maybe. Home wasn’t any good either. At least out here in the woods she didn’t have the feeling that everything was supposed to be normal. Maybe she could make a better snow shelter. Just stay out here, convince Dad she was doing some kind of long-term survival simulation. She could do it.

The radio countdown began. Wendy sat back on the snow and listened to the crackly announcer, a voice from a place where everything was okay and no one’s world had ended. She was so engrossed that she almost didn’t hear the approaching footsteps outside, and the huge lumbering creature tore half the top off her shelter before she got a shot at it.

“Really, Dad?” she said, as her father stood up and brushed the paintball pellet dust off his post-apocalyptic horror costume. “Do we have to do this every year?”

*

Old Man McGucket was awoken by a tremendous boom that sent him scuttling across the dirt on his knuckles.

“The end times!” he cried. “It’s coming! He’s—”

And then the dregs of the long-lost memory slipped away again and he looked up at the sky, captivated by the showers of multicolored fire that burst and then dissipated harmlessly before they fell to earth.

“Interestin’,” McGucket muttered to himself. “I’ve got to add that to the PterodactylTron!”

*

“But we cannot play Telephone with two people!” said Candy.

“Ughhhh!” Grenda bellowed. “We can’t play _anything_ with just two people! I hate games!”

Candy, who could sense there was a full-on Grenda tantrum coming that was likely to get them both grounded if she didn’t intervene, grabbed a pile of paper and markers off the floor.

“Perhaps we can invent one of our own?” she suggested.

They were interrupted by a strange noise. Not that strange noises were particularly, well, strange around Gravity Falls.

Grenda yanked open the window and stuck her head out.

“There’s fireworks!” she said.

“It must be after midnight!” Candy replied.

“Hey, year!” Grenda shouted at the sky. “You better not be terrible! Last year sucked!”

Candy pursed her lips. “Do you think it would be auspicious if we greeted the new year as Grendy, Destroyer of Worlds? I have sparklers!”

“And I have lipsick!” Grenda yelled, sweeping Candy off her feet. “Let’s do it!”

*

It was a shame, her father always told her, that there was no way to set off fireworks so that the common folk couldn’t see them. At least the extravagant show of wealth should keep them suitably awed.

The Northwests’ New Years celebration was world class. Of course it was. Everything the Northwests did was world class. Pacifica was permitted to stay up and participate, provided she had been excelling in all of her lessons. She wore the dress her mother picked out for her, and smiled, and mingled, and had a wonderful time.

Of course. She always had a wonderful time, as long as she behaved.

Sometimes she wondered what it would be like to see the fireworks from outside the estate, to have a view that wasn’t perfect. And then she realized that those thoughts were absurd. No Northwest would ever be allowed to be anything other than perfect.

*

“Ten! Nine! Eight!”

The chant took on a life of its own, picking up speed and volume as it went. The words carried in the open air, up into the sky. Anyone looking down on the roof of the Mystery Shack would have seen the fog of ten people’s breath, ten warm bodies pushing out air into a frozen world and laughing as they did so. There’s a feeling that comes sometimes when people are together and happy in the cold, a certainty that your exhalations can warm the whole universe.

“Seven! Six! Five!”

Pacifica snuggled deep into the wool of her lopi sweater. It was like the ones the others were wearing, though the patterns were all slightly different. Mabel had knit them for everyone as Hanukkah presents. It was . . . odd, being a part of “everyone.” Having things that were chunky and odd and handmade. Sitting here on a roof with snow seeping into her knees and confetti in her hair and not caring.

Nothing about this gathering was perfect. She loved it.

Candy adjusted her night vision goggles. She didn’t really need them, but she was proud of the tinkering she’d done and had brought them to talk gadgets with Dipper. Even in the low light, she could see exactly how much Mabel was smiling. Beside her, Grenda passed out sparklers. It was a wonder she’d made it to midnight; she’d already celebrated New Year’s with Marius in his Austrian castle and then taken advantage of a few supernatural tricks to beat the time zones back to Oregon.

Fiddleford stared up at the sky. Slowly, the dregs of a long-lost memory began to take shape in his mind and he smiled across at Ford, thinking of college and late nights and singing.

“Four! Three-two-one!”

Wendy punched the air as she chanted. A tiny part of her still felt like she should be off in the woods miles away from civilization, but her Dad had admitted that there wasn’t much point in apocalypse training now that she’d survived the actual literal apocalypse. And kicked butt during it, too.

Soos had still celebrated New Year’s the old way with Abuelita at 8. But this time there had been people with them. More cookies. More laughter. And now, for the first time in his life, he was awake with his family to watch the fireworks.

Mabel glanced around, already plotting her first round of hugs of the new year, and smiling every time she saw one of her Grunkles. Good thing the Pines had a history of producing the least boring grown-ups ever.

There’s been no question about whether the kids were allowed to stay up until midnight, so Dipper hadn’t needed to make a Plan. Only plans, lower-case and plural. To help with cookies. To see how many people he and Grunkle Ford could rope into and DD&MD one-shot. To make sure that most of the glitter going on edible things was actually edible. And, maybe the most important, to let himself goof off for a few hours and just be a kid.

“Happy New Year!!”

Ford quietly reached out and switched off the alarm three seconds before it hit midnight. Time was flexible, after all, and a cheer was a much better way to ring in the new year than a chronometer. He raised his glass.

Stan clinked their glasses together in a toast. They’d made a pot of mulled cider instead of looking for champagne. Who cared about tradition, anyway?

“Happy New Year, Ford,” he said.

The fireworks went off, and suddenly all of their faces were bathed with light.


End file.
